I made a booking with Direct Flights on 21 June whereby I booked return airfares to Denpasar for 4 people and following subsequent emails to the company was never informed that Garuda Airlines changed the departure and return times of this flight.
Consequently, my family and I were left stranded at Sydney airport having missed our flights. I made numerous telephone calls to the staff of Direct Flights and was treated with disrespect and rudeness and found them to be quite deflective in their response. At no time did they try and assist me to fix the problem. Many of these phone calls were made in the presence of from Garuda airlines.
As we had missed our Garuda flight and with the lack of assistance from staff members of Direct Flights, Garuda offered us a flight out the next day with an additional expense of $744. Given that we would lose 1 night prepaid accommodation, car transfer fees prepaid, a surfing tour prepaid together with 1 nights accommodation in Sydney and the additional Garuda fares we found it necessary to book with Flight Centre a direct flight with Jetstar to leave that day. This cost was $2,255.22 (copy of booking attached). This additional expense was necessarily
incurred to mitigate our loss.
At no time did any staff member mention that the time of the flight had changed or that Garuda Airlines do not have a check-in site available on the internet nor that Garuda are unavailable on
weekends (which would be 24-48 hoursprior to my departure time).
After not being able to check-in online with Garuda Airlines on the Sunday monring 24 hours prior to my departure, I tried to contacted only Direct Flights only to find my call to be directed to a to a lady who I explained my dilemma and she gave me a 1300 number to call to check-in. This number just rang unanswered. At no time did this person advise that check-in online or via telephone on Sunday was not available.
As our flight from Brisbane to Sydney was via Qantas flight QF8 departing at 7.45am, I telephoned Garuda from my mobile phone at the airport at 7am only to find there to still be no answer. Upon arriving at Sydney airport and speaking to ground staff was I advised that the flight had departed 2 hours earlier.
Our family are frequent travellers both domestic and international and at no time have I ever experienced such circumstances before.
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